A billion U.S. dollars could buy you a buzzy Silicon Valley startup, the Hope diamond (three times over), not one but ten trips to the moon. Yet it can not buy the U.S. something as fundamentally necessary as a Zika vaccine—at least not in the year 2016. Sure, the U.S. government's putting $1.1 billion toward the Zika fight, a good chunk of which will go to securing the best researchers to develop a Zika vaccine as fast as they can. But even if researchers finished the vaccine today, they'd still need to complete clinical trials before making the vaccine publicly available. Optimistic estimates declare a Zika vaccine might be here by 2018.

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But now it's 2016, and health experts say the first locally borne case of Zika in the U.S. is imminent.

So far, none of the 691 cases of Zika in the U.S. have been attributed to transmission from Zika-infected mosquitoes on U.S. soil, though of course it also hasn't been mosquito season...until now. Experts don't expect an U.S. Zika outbreak the scale of the one Brazil experienced, but summer is here, mosquito season is starting, and they do expect things to escalate.

In all the chatter about the best response plan while we wait for the vaccine, one unconventional idea caught my attention: guerilla-style self-immunization. According to the CDC, Zika virus usually presents only mild symptoms (if any), clears from the blood after only one week, and "once a person has been infected [with Zika], he or she is likely to be protected from future infections." Zika's only really dangerous to contract while pregnant, because that creates up to a 13 percent chance that the baby will be born with the devastating birth defect microcephaly. If you connect those dots, could it make sense for women who want to get pregnant down the road to intentionally get Zika before they start family planning, effectively immunizing themselves against a Zika infection while pregnant?

As one Redditor mused:

We spoke to several experts for guidance about the controversial strategy. How dangerous is it? And would it even work? Before you book your summer vacation in the Puerto Rico to "safely" knock the Zika thing out long before you start "trying," consider their four key points:

#1: We can't definitively say that contracting Zika once means you'll never get the virus again.

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It's true that "we think that having the Zika virus now [as a non-pregnant woman] should not affect future pregnancies," said Dr. Tosin Goje, who runs the Reproductive Infectious Diseases Program at the Cleveland Clinic. Still, Goje noted that no one knows this for sure, which is why doctors are urging caution against assuming there is any "good" time to get Zika. "We think it confers some form of protection," but we just don't know. It may be likely—but until it's proven, there's still a chance that a repeated Zika infection will happen to someone.

#2: You could be one of the few people who have a very serious reaction that's unrelated to pregnancy.

There's also not a total lack of risk to non-pregnant people who get Zika. Yes, it's true that about 80% of people who get the virus have no symptoms at all, and that "the 20% of people who are symptomatic" usually have "vague non-specific symptoms that most people would brush away as nothing," said Dr. Goje.

The most common Zika symptoms, according to the CDC. They are mild, and usually last about a week

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Still, that doesn't mean it's a walk in the park for everyone. "Although most people will develop mild symptoms or no symptoms at all, we do not know the full the range of possible outcomes that Zika may cause," said Dr. Denise Jamieson, co-lead of the Pregnancy and Birth Defects Task Force of the CDC Zika Virus Response.

The biggest concern would be Guillain-Barré syndrome, in which a person's own immune system damages their nerve cells, causing muscle weakness or even paralysis. The CDC says Zika patients who get GBS "very likely" had it triggered by the Zika infection; and though it's a very rare complication—currently 2 cases out of the 691 cases in the U.S.—it's also a very serious one.

#3: You wouldn't be able to get tested to confirm you have Zika all that easily.

Even if you wanted to intentionally contract Zika, it's not like you could easily take a quick test that confirms that you do in fact have it. Right now, Zika testing is conducted by state health departments and the CDC; your doctor would have to follow an extensive process to get your blood tested for Zika. There's red tape to go through, and then the testing itself is also a two-step process that can take up to three weeks to complete.

Mothers in Brazil holding babies born with microcephaly, which can create serious, lifelong health problems

Getty

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There is a commercial test offered by Quest Diagnostics that you could electively have your doctor order for you without having to go through the CDC, but it's not totally definitive. It "can only detect the virus when it is still present in blood. A negative test, therefore, does not conclude that the virus isn't still in the body," explains CNN. (Plus, if not covered by insurance, it's $500.)

Researchers are working towards a test that would be available for the general public—including a test by Harvard and University of Toronto researchers that could deliver results in less than an hour—but for now, that's still in development. Currently, a cheap, easy, and definitive test for Zika just isn't available to the general public.

#4: You could be bitten by mosquito while you have the virus, or transmit the disease to a sexual partner, then accidentally spread the disease to other people as a result.

Dr. Jamieson had one more word of caution for anyone considering the intentional exposure tactic: Even if it might possibly give you immunity from future contractions, it puts others at risk. (This is the same reason that chicken pox parties, which people had to expose themselves to the disease before the 1995 vaccine became available, were inadvisable.) Zika lives in your blood for about a week, so if you contracted Zika abroad and returned to one of the areas where the type of mosquito most likely to transmit the virus lives, you'd could transmit it to those mosquitoes and put people in that area at risk, too.

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Areas where the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads Zika, lives

CDC

And let's not forget that Zika is also sexually transmitted. Right now, "we don't know if a woman with Zika can pass the virus to her sex partners," but we do now that if a man can pass it to a woman. Plus, "Zika virus can stay in semen longer than in blood, but we don't know exactly how long," says the CDC. (That's why they recommend men who were diagnosed with Zika use condoms specifically to prevent Zika transmission for six months after their diagnosis.) So if your Zika infection was passed to a man via mosquitoes or sexual transmission (it hasn't been ruled out), that increases the likelihood that if that man had sex months later with another woman, she could contract Zika that way.

Of course, the possibility of spreading this virus to other innocent people is unconscionable—especially to immune-compromised people who may not handle the "mild" symptoms all that well, to pregnant women, and to the unlucky few who get Guillain-Barré. Yes, if you were diagnosed with Zika long before starting a family and had barely any symptoms, you could see an upside in it. You personally don't have to worry all that much about getting Zika down the road. But for the general public, the risky self-immunization tactic is hardly a strategy to encourage.

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